Plenty Of Fish
by kingfisher's game
Summary: Breakups hurt, but tequila helps; that is, until Sougo has to walk home drunk from a frat party. Luckily, Kagura's there to give him a hand. Okikagu college AU


Plenty Of Fish

…

_Notes: __This was originally one of the creative exercises from Heads or Tails (based on the prompt "COLLEGE"). It's quick and a bit different from my usual fare, but I like it?_

_BTW, Kagura and Sougo are both college students in this, if that wasn't clear._

* * *

Sougo is leaving the party drunk—stumbling, dizzy drunk—when Hijikata calls SafeWalk. "The fuck is SafeWalk?" Sougo asks, even though he knows full well that SafeWalk is the university's campus night escort service, provided free of charge until 3:00 AM to give students a secure walk home (in theory after a long night of studying). "Call me an Uber."

"I'm not about to ruin my Uber rating if you vomit in the car," Hijikata tells him dryly. "And I'm not going to be responsible if you get mugged or end up in a ditch somewhere. Sit down and wait for the escort to come."

Sougo is too out of it to do anything but mutter "bastard" at Hijikata. He sits on the steps outside the frat house and opens his phone to scroll through his message history with his girlfriend.

_Ex-girlfriend_, his mind automatically corrects. Better delete the little heart emoji next to her name, "Imai Nobume", before it gets weird.

Hijikata glances at him from the side. "Don't call Nobume. You're drunk. It'll end badly."

Sougo wasn't planning on calling her, but now that Hijikata has ordered him not to, he feels an irrational urge to touch the call button on her contact. "It already ended badly."

Hijikata stays silent. Small mercies.

"How long are you going to wait out here? You can go back inside."

"I'll stay until the walker gets here," Hijikata replies brusquely. He lights a cigarette and the two of them wait in silence for the walker to arrive.

It takes ten minutes, and by the time she gets there Sougo is anxious to get home and wallow in his post-breakup melancholy. "Hi," she says, breathless and panting, like she ran to reach them on time. "Nice to meet you! I'm Kagura, the community service escort from SafeWalk. Are you Sougo?"

Sougo snorts. "Seriously? _You're_ going to prevent me from getting mugged?" She looks like a doll, all pale skin and pink cheeks, with coral-red hair tied up in a messy ponytail. She's _tiny_. He wouldn't have even believed she was the walker if she wasn't wearing a puffy yellow jacket emblazoned with "SAFEWALK ESCORT".

"I'm strong. I'll prove it to you. You wanna fight?" she asks cheerfully.

A little part of Sougo does want to fight. He wants to punch something in the face. But since the something that he wants to punch in the face is Hijikata and not this little bitty freshman girl, he shakes his head no. "Let's just get out of here."

"Okay! Just give me your address."

Sougo tries to think. What's his address, again? Something that starts with a 2. "Um…2105…2205…"

"7623 Willard road," says Hijikata exasperatedly. "He lives in apartment 205."

"Oh, really? That's close to my building. What a coincidence!" Still grinning, the red-haired girl links her arm with Sougo's and marches him to the end of the walk outside the frat house. The thumping music leaking out from inside sounds distant and watery. "If you're gonna puke, do it now, okay? I don't want to get anything on my shoes."

"I'm not going to puke," Sougo grumbles. Part of him wants to—his gut and, well, the section of his brain that doesn't want to go home to an apartment where his girlfriend isn't waiting there to meet him. But it's mostly the tequila. Sauza. Plastic bottle. Off-brand powder-blue "solo" cups, candy-tinted clear shot glasses, one after another. Ugh. Even _thinking_ about the smell of beer makes Sougo feel ill.

"Okee, okee," she says, the grin still pinned on her face. She hauls him down past the gate and gives a conspiratorial nod to the security guard.

The walk is pretty short, less than half a mile, but it takes more than twenty minutes because he keeps stumbling over his feet. The girl—what was her name again? (_Ka-gu-ra, she reminds him in sing-song when he asks_)—might be strong, but she's not much of a counterweight against him when he falls over. Out of instinct, his fingers latch onto her neon-yellow sleeve and they trip together into the sidewalk, rolling over into a bank of dead leaves.

"What the hell?" she yelps in her little-kid voice. Their legs are tangled up together, and Sougo's too drunk to have a good idea of where he ends and she starts. The cool night air bites against the exposed patches of Sougo's skin, and Kagura feels feverishly warm next to him. It's kinda nice.

"Get off me," she complains, pushing at his shoulder halfheartedly.

Sougo sighs and hangs his head into her shoulder. The cold, damp leaves are slimy against his cheek, and her jacket is much nicer. "My girlfriend…dumped me today."

Kagura stops struggling and a laugh bubbles up in her throat. "Aww, poor baby. Gonna cry?"

It's by far the rudest thing that anyone's said to him about the breakup. It's not like his friends are the nicest people on Earth, but at least they're not mocking him. For some reason, though, he can hear another voice laughing along with Kagura, and it sounds like his own.

Tension bleeds out of him as he feels Kagura's hand pet over his hair. "Don't worry, chihuahua. Plenty of fish in the sea."

He rolls over onto his back and she does the same, so her shoulder is leaning on his chest and they're both splayed out on the sidewalk, staring up at the cloudy night sky. "Have you ever been in love?" he asks.

"Nope. Have you?"

"I don't think so."

"So you weren't in love with your ex?"

Sougo shakes his head. The breakup hurts, but the truth is he wasn't in love with her. Not by a long shot. He isn't entirely sure what love is supposed to feel like, but getting into screaming matches with Nobume every other night is probably not the answer.

Her face turns toward him, her eyes startlingly blue in the orange street light. "Good for you, then, chihuahua. You'll get over her."

"Yeah? How?"

"Hm… You know what they say?" Kagura's eyelashes are so, so long, her face comically pretty in Sougo's drunken haze. "Best way to get over a woman…"

"…is to get under a new one?" Sougo finishes. And then they're laughing again, both of them, way harder than the joke calls far, and Sougo's sides hurt (so does his head) but he thinks maybe, just maybe, things are going to be okay.

Kagura walks him to his door and fits his key into the lock when his jittery hands won't listen to him, but he doesn't remember that when he wakes up in the morning. What he remembers is her hand in his hair and the way her eyes looked laughing under the streetlight. And somehow, when he goes to Contacts in his phone to delete the heart emoji next to Nobume's name, he's not surprised to find Kagura's name and number too.


End file.
